Chapter 22. The Command Prompt and PowerShell

You might have heard the term “Monad” frequently talked about in the past few years. Monad is the codename for the first major revision to the command-line world in the history of Windows. Monad was supposed to be big, and it is—you know it by its final name: PowerShell! However, before the newest command-line environment is discussed, let’s look at what you can do with the simple command prompt, which is still powerful.

Even though Windows is thought of as a graphical operating system—especially with Vista, its new, prettier interface—the command-line aspect should not be ignored. Nearly every task you perform via the graphical interface can be performed in at least one way via the command-line or scripting interface. In fact, this was a big driver for Windows 2003: All management should be possible via the command line; that makes it easier to automate via scripts or remotely. (These commands are talked about throughout this book; actual commands are not covered specifically in this chapter.) Although point and click is nice, the command line is also handy to do something faster and with less ambiguity. For example, if you want to check your IP address, a quick ipconfig shows that your basic IP information or ipconfig /all gives full IP stack information, including DNS configuration. To check a computer’s name, run hostname: